When the call to prayer interrupts a Mass in the West. A mosque inside the church?
A video of the city of Galway (Ireland) in 2025 shows a priest celebrating Mass while a Muslim imam interrupts with the call to prayer.
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In May 2025, a video recorded in Galway (Ireland) was widely circulated on social media: In the middle of a Catholic Mass, an imam intoned the Islamic call to prayer froml pulpit, a liturgical space reserved for the clergy under canon law. The scene has sparked a fierce controversy among the faithful and religious groups, who regard the act as an unacceptable intrusion, a desecration of the Christian ritual and an act of supremacism.
What was the Muslim doing in the church?
According to the information published on Journalists' Watch, The Muslim was invited as part of an interfaith event during a Catholic Mass held in Galway., Ireland. The apparent aim was to foster dialogue and coexistence between religions, but the precise moment when the imam intoned the’call to prayer The Islamic call to prayer from the pulpit during Mass provoked outrage among many Catholic faithful.
This act was neither spontaneous nor an external interruption: It was permitted or tolerated by the organisation of the religious ceremony., which has opened a debate about the limits of interreligious dialogue and whether certain gestures can be perceived as a lack of respect for the Christian liturgy.
When interreligious dialogue crosses the boundaries of mutual respect
The Islamic call to prayer (call to prayer), intoned in this case from the pulpit of a Catholic church, is not just a religious notice, sIt also makes a theological assertion with a supremacist component: it proclaims that «Allah is the greatest» and that there is no god but Allah..
In an interreligious context, this message can be perceived as an explicit denial of the Christian faith, especially when it is spoken within a temple where Jesus Christ is venerated as the Son of God. For many faithful, allowing this proclamation in the middle of a Mass is tantamount to admitting the superiority of one creed over another within a sacred space, a fact that has provoked a reaction of indignation and incomprehension.
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